Former Board Member Appointed to Vacant Seat; Superintendent Recommends Delaying Peebles Closure

During a public interview Wednesday night with the North Allegheny School Board, board candidate Karen Boujokos promised that, thanks to her 10 years of prior service on the board, she would be able to “hit the ground running.”

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(1) We have 11 candidates interview for the empty seat on our school board.

(2) All candidates have qualities that would make them an asset to the board.

(3) Of all the candidates, our school board chose to vote in the one candidate with previous board experience.

While I can appreciate Mrs. Boujokos’s 10 years of prior service on the board, I feel that we missed a great opportunity last night. North Allegheny is facing some very tough decisions in the near future. Whether its closing schools, cutting programs or coming up with alternative funding sources for the ever increasing pension obligation, the district is in a tough spot. During these trying times, some board members have shown an unwillingness to “think outside of the box.” This has been evident in their lack of response to pursuing ideas for advertising revenue or the outsourcing of transportation services. Why not bring some new blood on to the board? Why not bring someone in that would be open to fresh ideas and capable of looking at ALL options?

I suppose by now I shouldn’t be surprised. That being said, it is disappointing to see our board still incapable of embracing new ideas to move our district forward.

The argument to vote in Mrs Boujoukos was that she has experience and could hit the ground running with no learning curve. While Mrs Boujoukos admitted last night that she had not been following the current situation, other applicants were in fact up to date.

I am afraid that Mrs Boujoukos is going to have a very steep learning curve as she reads through two cumbersome demographic and feasibility studies, the stenographers recording of a 7 hour public hearing, the countless letters sent in from the community, the e-reports and board minutes from the last year, as well all the special reports from the administration (Budgets, Human Resources, etc…)